Archive for April 2010

I’m at my friend Shilpa’s house right now. She has 24/7 internet, can you believe that? Lucky. I thought I’d take this opportunity to update my readers!

The hot air is moving in, and the mosquitos are getting vicious. I have to turn my fan on over my bed just to blow away the mosquitos to put on my mosquito net so they don’t all swarm inside. They really are an annoying insect and I’m trying my best to deal. The worst is when it’s nightime, nothing to do, there’s no electricity so it’s super quiet, and all you can hear are mosquitos buzzing… and we all know how annoying the sound of a mosquito can be. Note to people who send me care packages: any sort of mosquito or pest repellent would be appreciated. Peace Corps’ family friendly bug spray doesn’t quite seem to do the trick! Gracias a Dios I haven’t yet had dengue.

My stove exploded the day I had friends coming over. I was heating up water and BOOM. Big fireball in my face. I wasn’t hurt, but it did burn my arm hairs and eyelashes a bit. The weird thing is, I had a vision multiple times about the stove exploding on the exact day that it really did explode. Weird, eh? No worries though, I returned the stove and got an upgrade for a stove with much better quality.

On a lighter note, I have been cooking a lot lately. The other night I cooked eggplant from my backyard. I don’t even like eggplant, but I cooked it. Why? Cause it made me feel awesome. And I had no food. I also cooked guandules that I found in my backyard and that was even more awesome because they’re delicious. I’m not real sure exactly what they are… like a bean or a pea. I boiled them, added a pumpkin type of thing, cilantro, garlic, green pepper, seasonings… YUM. Ate it with rice. Ani liked it too.

Speaking of Ani, I still am completely in love with her. She’s such a fantastic dog! Some volunteers came to visit and they all were impressed by how sweet she is and how cute and clean. I took her to get a free rabies vaccine, and soon she’ll be getting fixed so she can’t have any puppies… Sorry Ani, but I can’t handle more than one dog.

Nadira came out to visit. We had an awesome time. Spent a few days on the north coast on the beach, and went on the eastern peninsula to a private resort/beach. Both very beautiful. We also went to 27 Charcos (waterfalls) and jumped off the first seven. The trip was a great challenge for me because I was forced to use a lot of spanish and I think it was a good confidence booster. We pretty much backpacked through the country and I feel great about it. On our last night, we stayed at a very Americanized/touristy hotel and it was amazing. It made me miss the luxuries and convenience of American quality and customer service… and food. But, I’m back in my site and enjoying my Dominican lifestyle, so no worries.

This past week was Semana Santa (that’s not pronounced like santa claus, it means saint,) which means it was vacation time for everyone. Even if I wanted to work, I couldn’t. The kids weren’t in school, my women didn’t meet, so I just hung out! Spent some time with my buddy Shilpa. I slept in a hammock for a few hours at my project partners house. Cleaned up my place a bit. It was a nice week. I colored Easter eggs with my host mom and her granddaughter, Maria and Ambar. They both equally loved it and it was fun to expose them to that tradition. After all, 1/3 of Peace Corps’ goal is to share your own culture! 🙂 So I wasn’t completely slacking.

I’d like to say thank you to Barack Obama and Aaron Williams, Peace Corps’ new director. President Obama has been the first in many years to put money BACK into Peace Corps, thus increasing the readjustment allowance for volunteers and increasing various other budgets. Also, I think that means we will be getting more volunteers than usual this upcoming fall.

As far as my projects go, my women’s group is still making “Caribe Clean”, the disifectant product, and I just received training on the youth entrepreneurship class and will be starting them next week. Not too many exciting notes on those two things right now though.

My parents are planning to come visit in June, so that’s awesome. Everyone in my town is excited to meet them, although they speak absolutely no Spanish and not many people in my town know English.

Can I just talk grammatically for one second? Since the “s” in Peace Corps is silent, do I still just put an apostraphe after the “s” if I’m giving it ownership of something? Because I’m then giving it the s sound. For example: Peace Corps’ new director. Answer me that, readers.

Found a small tarantula in my bathroom last night. Killed it with my broom. That’s tarantula number 3 at my house. Not too bad, but still not great.

Well, it’s pouring down rain now and Shilpa is about to return from a meeting. We’re going to make yuca and eggs for dinner, whoop, so I must be going. Hope you all are enjoying the spring weather! Nothing like fresh spring air… and grass. 🙂

Subscribe

The Sarah Roberts Experience syndicates its weblog posts
and Comments using a technology called
RSS (Real Simple Syndication). You can use a service like Bloglines to get
notified when there are new posts to this weblog.